Market Perspectives9 chapters

2023 State of Intelligent Authentication and Fraud Prevention

A first look at the results of Opus' survey of 250 identification, authentication and fraud prevention executive-level decision makers.

An exclusive first look and discussion of the results of Opus' survey of 250 identification, authentication and fraud prevention executive-level decision makers. In this fun session, we covered the following:

  • What changes you and your peers have experienced and expect?
  • How priorities have shifted for the coming year
  • How the potential for voice self-service and telephone channel automation is constrained by poor identification and authentication performance
  • How many organisations have started transitioning to modern identification and authentication methods like Voice Biometrics, Network Authentication and app-based methods
  • How the state of cloud technology adoption makes it easier than ever to implement modern identification and authentication technologies.

The full report will be published in April 2023, and you can find out more at:  https://www.opusresearch.net

Transcript

29 min read

Matt Smallman0:00

Good afternoon. My name's Matt Smallman, and I'm the founder of the Modern Security Community. Thank you very much for joining us in this afternoon's session, where we're gonna be joined by Dan Miller and Derek Top from Opus Research. And we're gonna discuss the latest research findings from their 2023 Intelligent Authentication and Fraud Prevention Survey, which I think has some really, really insightful thoughts for us as an industry, both end users and implementers, also solution providers of this technology. So, without further ado, we're gonna jump over and say hello to the team.

Hey, Dan. Hey, Derek. Thank you very much for joining this afternoon.

Dan Miller0:40

Hello.

Matt Smallman0:41

Just want to introduce yourselves-

Derek Top0:42

[inaudible 00:02:17]. Thanks for having us.

Matt Smallman0:44

... very quickly to everyone who's on the line. Dan first.

0:48 Introduction and background to the survey

Dan Miller0:48

Sure. I'm Dan Miller. I'm the lead analyst and founder at Opus Research. And over to you, Derek.

Derek Top0:54

Yeah, I'm Derek Top. I'm the senior analyst and a research director with Opus Research. We're a third-party analyst firm. We look at technologies around security, in addition to self-service and conversational technologies.

Matt Smallman1:08

Thanks very much. So I think the first place to start is just a bit of a background to this survey. So, is this the second, the third, or the fourth year? I've lost track, Derek, of-

Derek Top1:18

Yeah, the-

Matt Smallman1:19

... how many times you've run this survey.

Derek Top1:20

We have done it a few times. I mean, for the purposes of this report, we're looking at year over year. So the last two years, we put together the same kind of questions in the same kind of format to a group of executive decision-makers and implementers looking at security and authentication. So the survey is 250 folks, 125 in the UK and Europe, 125 in North America, with the goal is really to understand how contact centres are looking at authentication and fraud prevention processes. So we do ask about, in terms of the digital and voice channels, how the contact centres is looking at the volumes in them, what they're doing from an authentication perspective, and then also from a fraud prevention, to thwart some attacks. So that's the goal.

Dan Miller2:12

Yeah. And I would only add, and very quickly, that this is one year tracking from the year prior regarding a combination around what we call intelligent authentication. We've been doing surveys of enterprise implementation strategies for voice biometrics for seven or eight years [laughs], as you were saying, Matt. And that's something to keep in mind as you look at the results. We have consciously added more factors. We regard and looked at the ancient factors that seem to persist as a bunch of candidates that are more modern are presenting themselves.

Matt Smallman2:58

And, for me, one of the most interesting thing about this year's survey is that, historically, we've done this as a snapshot, to take a point-in-time view as to what people think. But we've never really gone back to look at whether that happened or not. And this year-

Dan Miller3:13

Yeah.

Matt Smallman3:13

... for the first time, we've both gone back and said what did happen to some of the same people who said what they thought was gonna happen, as well as what is gonna happen.

Dan Miller3:22

Right.

Matt Smallman3:23

And we've also been able to expand the questions to include some really key questions around how that process is performed today, so we can start to develop some benchmarks for the industry as a whole to see how people are doing. And that's, again-

Dan Miller3:37

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman3:37

... blew out some really interesting results, which we will now get to. So, no suspense, jumping straight into the presentation.

3:47 What's happening with call volume, complexity and duration?

Matt Smallman3:47

I think the first thing, and this will be as no surprise to anyone who works in the call centre industry, is that, compared year over year, in most cases, everyone expects call volume, complexity, and duration to increase. So the age-old death of the call centre, death of the agents, is mostly overplayed. But I don't think this will be any surprise to anyone. I don't know, Dan or Derek, did you have any specific observations with these sets of results?

Dan Miller4:21

Well-

Derek Top4:22

Well-

Dan Miller4:22

... I think it's very... Oh, go ahead, Derek. [laughs]

Derek Top4:25

Yeah, no. I'll just say, just a note too, like this is one of these things too, because we did do the survey just in the post-pandemic world. And I know we're kinda sick of talking about the pandemic in some ways. But there is something to note there in terms of what we may've seen from initial demands around 2021, and then that first year after. But I think it's just something to note. But yeah, no, in terms of the no surprises, I mean, call volume is up. And I think that's part of what we're seeing, that the contact centre is always the first point of return for many customers.

Dan Miller5:03

And we have long-term coverage of what we call conversational technologies. And this is very consistent with [laughs] what we've seen in terms of the staying power of the contact centre in the face of growth of digital channels. But, and all are growing. [laughs] Derek mentioned the pandemic. The pandemic has lapsed into being the endemic now. And we're seeing what is lasting after there were extreme growth [laughs] in the use across all digital channels, which exposed issues and weaknesses in the current delivery channels. But then, as volumes has returned to... It didn't regress to the mean, it regressed to [laughs] the post, to the endemic state of things right now.

And it's just pointing out that call volumes for sure went up, and they will stay up to a degree. The complexity of the calls, that gets really interesting, because there are... As you look at these conversations that companies have with their clients, their customers, they are asynchronous in nature, and they cover a multitude of channels. And one of the first-order challenges that has emerged is: can you authenticate somebody in a digital channel, and then, when they move over to voice, do you have strong confidence it's the same individual using that voice channel? And that's something that's going on in the background here as well.

Matt Smallman6:42

Yeah, I completely agree. And as somebody who's spent most of their career in customer service, this chart is the red alarm chart, yeah? So volumes are up, duration is up, and complexity is up. And that equals, ultimately, I need more people, and more resources, and better resources-

Dan Miller6:59

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman6:59

... in order to meet that level of customer demand. So, immediately, I need to go into bat with chief operating officers, with finance teams, to secure the resources I need just to continue delivering the current expectations of service, let alone anything above and beyond that. And I think-

Dan Miller7:16

Right.

Matt Smallman7:16

... that's what leads on really, interestingly, to our next point.

Read the full transcript (29 min read)

7:20 How have priorities shifted?

Matt Smallman7:20

When we ask people what their priorities for work in the intelligent authentication and fraud prevention space was, in 2022, coming off the back of the pandemic, it was really clearly orientated around security.

Dan Miller7:32

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman7:32

People were worried about the money going out of the door and/or the data going out of the door. And most projects were focused on security. And that has switched wholesale back to efficiency and usability as the priority going forward for this. And I think, for me, that's a really, really interesting switch, and shows the transition from the set of technologies we're gonna talk about in a second from being a security-focused thing to something that has real business benefits and opportunities, as Dan mentioned. Any thoughts-

Dan Miller8:07

Yeah.

Matt Smallman8:07

... from you guys on that particular finding?

Derek Top8:12

Yeah, well, I always think the fact that, I think, to the point, it allows some creativity and flexibility in terms of your current security and authentication processes. With the idea of preventing fraud, or just, like, shoring up security, as the main priority for organisations two years ago, really does speak to what is possible from an authentication standpoint. And usability, this gets back to the whole idea around consumer expectations, and when people are calling into a contact centre, or just going through digital channels, they have a problem to be solved. They don't really want to go through the hoops of security, authentication. So allowing some flexibility around usability gives it personalisation. It really opens the door for some benefits of what more streamlined authentication processes can be.

Dan Miller9:01

Yeah, and when I think about the internal sales job that the contact centre folks have to do to bring in new authentication technologies, this is very consistent with what we're seeing enterprise-wide in terms of investment in technologies that improve the customer experience. There's a real focus on making things easy for the customer, as well as making the agents more productive. And those two factors combined, the efficiency, which translates to a bottom-line savings, and the customer experience, which maps to things like customer retention, task completion for customers and that sort of thing, we have to be mindful of that. And this is very internal politics, correct [laughs], internally politically correct, if you will. There should be a focus... I mean, there's a constant balancing act between the two, as we've mentioned. But for the coming couple of years, the pendulum has swung more towards this improved customer experience.

10:06 What is the automation opportunity?

Matt Smallman10:06

And I think when we add these two data points together, plus whatever's happening in the rest of the economy and in technology in general, I think it's a really exciting time. When we think about the capabilities of conversational commerce that you've been talking about for ever since I've known you, Dan and Derek, about the potential of that technology, it seems that we're now on the cusp of that potential being realised. The interfaces that those systems provide are now a state of usability and effectiveness that allows people to have the kind of interactions that they might've previously had with an agent. Not every interaction, but certainly a fair chunk of them.

And then, when we look at the advances in the last six weeks, let alone six months, in terms-

Dan Miller10:54

[laughs]

Matt Smallman10:54

... AI, and the ability for that to integrate, and to plug into everything, and connect to the gaps between stuff, that... The second challenge, which we've always had in the long tail of customer services. Yes, we've always been able to automate balance enquiries, and position enquiries, and where's-my-delivery type enquiries, because they're low volume, and the low complexity and high frequency. But that enormous long tail of enquiries that's nearly always needed a human to understand, if not necessarily from the customer's point of view to deliver any particular added value, those are now within reach of the conversational solutions that we've been talking about for many years. And I think that's what's really exciting about it, is that, for the first time, that increased volume, demand, and complexity, we have a real chance of meeting some of that demand with automation that we never previously would've had. We'd have to throw people at this kind of problem in the past. I don't know if you agree or disagree. It might be a bit of an extreme position, Dan.

Dan Miller12:01

Oh, not at all extreme. I was thinking, as you were talking about that, is what becomes interesting, as this AI layer takes over the customer care and the contact centre domain, that a bunch of the knowledge that informs the bots that provide better customer service are using personal information to know that person better, and then better match that what they're doing at the time. 'Cause you establish a level of security based on the risk associated with the person, the risk associated with what that person is doing.

And when this conversation culminates in a phone call [laughs] to the contact centre, they're pulling up, in order to inform the bot to provide better service, personal information, and then matching it with stuff from the back office. And it is so important that there be a strong trust fabric beneath it, the thing that's built around stronger authentication, that, even though I'm talking... [laughs] The part of providing the convenient, fast resolution of a problem does indeed [laughs] involve doing strong authentication. So-

Derek Top13:26

Right.

Dan Miller13:27

... even though we're saying, "Hey, convenience is prevailing security," they're interdependent. And you have to do both.

Derek Top13:38

Well, and just, sorry, just to finish that point in terms of our own experience, we just recently did a conversational AI awards. And a number of the nominees, and in fact some of the award winners, were looking at the ability to have that contained, deflecting the calls from a contact centre based on the fact that they're authenticated, can resolve whatever transaction they need. But also, once they are, and as you were saying, Matt, once they get to an agent, the information has been transferred to the agent that can provide personal service. And we did see, of course, agent handling time down. But we did also see a number of folks were [inaudible 00:15:53] customer experience does go up based on having the authenticated, personalised experience.

Matt Smallman14:22

Brilliant. And just because we have a number of people on the call, if you have any questions you want to ask Dan, Derek, or I, then please feel free to drop those into the chat or the Q&A feature, and I'll put them to the team at the right point. I think, having talked about the opportunity and the promise, I think what was-

Dan Miller14:41

Hm.

14:41 How is this constrained by poor identification and authentication performance today?

Matt Smallman14:41

... really interesting for me, for the first time this year, was that performance benchmark, asking organisations whether they tried to identify customers in automation, whether they tried to authenticate customers in automation, and how well they did at that. Now, for me-

Dan Miller14:58

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman14:58

... that's been pivotal to my work over the last almost decade, and what I call the security path of digitalisation, which we'll look at in a minute. But, having worked with some very high-performing organisations in this space, I was completely blown away by how poorly I think we do, as an industry, at achieving these objectives, and therefore how constrained advanced AI and conversational solutions might be by the mere fact that we don't know who the person is, or are insufficiently confident that they are that person, to actually do the thing they're asking us for. So, just bear with me whilst I find the right slide. So, we-

Dan Miller15:37

Hm.

Matt Smallman15:38

... we asked people whether they attempted to identify people through automation or with authentication. And in this chart, you will see 100% of calls come in at the left, and the width of the line is indicative of the volume. And a startling 55% of organisations didn't even attempt to identify the caller before they got to an agent, which I think, for me, in an age where, I saw some other research we mentioned in another session, close to 80% of callers to most organisations are calling on their own mobile phone that you probably already have on your records, I think that's just a frightening number, just to leave that on the table. You don't even have to worry about authentication at this point. Just not knowing who they are and being able to make sensible automation and routing decision was quite startling for me.

But the second effect of those: even when we did that, we only managed to achieve it about half the time we asked the question, just under-

Dan Miller16:37

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman16:37

... we asked the question, which again, and we'll come to this later, I think is testament to some of the legacy methods that exist in this. Like, if you are asking people to remember their account number, or the order number, or their customer reference number that you once printed on a letter that you sent them, then their chances of getting it right are very low. And we saw that in the results. So, given that only about a quarter of calls ever get through to an automated identification, automated authentication step, it was quite pleasing to see that those organisations that went to that effort did attempt to authenticate most callers. So only about 10% of what was left ended up with no attempt to authentication.

But again, when they did attempt, half of all organisations by volume were unsuccessful, more than half were unsuccessful. And again, I think anyone who's worked in this space for a long time knows that whether or not the user is capable of answering knowledge-based questions in an IVR or conversational solution, the user experience is often so poor that they choose not to. And they end up speaking to agents. So, in our model, we saw less than 9% of callers ended up in both an identified and authenticated state before they ended up speaking to an agent. And if we consider that maybe half of those intents, generously, are available for self-serve, that means that the containment opportunity, when we look across the whole of market, was less than 5%. And I think that's just terrible compared to the efficacy of these solutions that we see deployed with some of the higher-performing organisations.

So, for me, this was a real, real eye-opener. And I'm really looking forward to tracking this and potentially digging into it in more depth as we go through the next few years, because the opportunity of these technologies that are now affordable, easy to implement, and mostly delivery on customers' requirements, is enormous. But they're held back. They're constrained by the fact that we just can't get many people to start the journey. They end up in the 9% bracket at the top. I don't, Dan or Derek... This is the first time I've shown you this chart. Did you have any observations from it for us?

Dan Miller18:59

Yeah. Well, I would only add, taking the point of view of a customer, or client, or patient of companies employing this sort of thing, the prevailing experience puts a [laughs] lie to this idea that convenience is now prevailing. Because, from the customer point of view, without employing the automation before you talk to the agent, you're just making the calls longer, and you're putting the burden on the customer.

So, if you wanna be consistent [laughs] with your objective of placing emphasis on convenience and security, this just shows that you're doing a fairly crummy job right now. And the prevailing model is, if they are using the smartphones, many people just assume that they're authenticated, 'cause they opened it with their face or whatever. [laughs] And then they just hit a wall [laughing] when they try to talk to somebody.

Derek Top20:06

Yeah, and I mean, that 5% that you talked about, Matt, just shows the breadth of opportunity here around education. I think they don't know what they don't know in terms of the automation opportunities that are out there. And we brought up a mobile phone a couple times. And for the first time, this study and, in our past couple Intelliviews, what we call our larger view of the solution providers in the market, we are looking at network authentication. We're gonna get into this more, but around the multiple touchpoints, multiple opportunities to authenticate, identify customers in that journey, is really, I think, what we're seeing as a tremendous opportunity. And that can be, obviously, done through automation. So, yeah, I think that's what... There's an education that still needs to happen within the market, both from a customer's standpoint and also from a organisational standpoint.

Matt Smallman20:56

And I'd agree. I've been somewhat cynical about the effectiveness of some these self-service automation conversational AI technologies for a while. And-

Dan Miller21:07

Hm.

Matt Smallman21:07

... you guys all know that. But I've-

Dan Miller21:09

Yeah.

Matt Smallman21:09

... been by what I've seen the last 12 months. And I know many organisations are making that investment. And it works for those people that they put through it. But, ultimately, they won't realise the full value of that unless they're able to put more people through it. And that's what this chart-

Dan Miller21:24

Exactly.

Matt Smallman21:24

... really showing us there. We just can't get people into the start of the funnel.

Dan Miller21:29

Hm.

Matt Smallman21:30

So I've just had a comment to say that the chart's a bit small for people. So apologies for that. We will-

Derek Top21:35

It is true.

Matt Smallman21:36

... send it out afterwards and make sure you can see it. Apologies for that.

Dan Miller21:40

Oh, you mean there's letters in there?

Matt Smallman21:42

Yes. [laughing] There are letters in there. So-

Dan Miller21:44

Yeah. Oh.

Matt Smallman21:44

... apologies if it didn't come out very well on the screen. Moving on, I think the challenge underneath this is that most people are still grounded in what we would call traditional identification and authentication methods.

22:01 What methods do organisations use today to identify and authenticate customers?

Matt Smallman22:01

And we ask people, what was the primary means of identification/authentication? Now, we actually asking what were their primary, secondary, and tertiary, and what were they investing in, what were they planning to use and deploy. And you more of that in the report. But I think, from a summary level, what we see is, well, not the vast majority, but a significant chunk of people are using what we'd call traditional methods for identification. That's things like social security number, account numbers, stuff that's easy for you to put into your systems but not necessarily easy for a customer to remember or to key back to you.

A fair chunk have moved on to what we call more transitional methods, where they are using stuff that's easier for customers to remember. But it still requires some effort on both parts. And then it was promising to see that actually there are a fair chunk of organisations now, 22% in our survey, that are using more modern methods for identification, principally using the ANI, or call line identifier outside North America, to identify customers. So that was really promising, and quite a bit of progress since the last time we asked that question.

On the authentication side, though, the story is pretty poor. So the vast majority of people are still using knowledge-based authentication questions, what we call traditional authentication, whether that be transactional or demographic information. We even make the distinction that we probably call PINs and passwords transitional, because they at least provide a little bit more security than the kind of information that's available on Facebook or could be easily researched through LinkedIn or socially engineered.

But what was really promising for me, and this the first time this is really even noted as material, is that 10% of respondents said that they were now using modern authentication methods, whether that be analysis of network signalling data [inaudible 00:25:31] as calls arrive in the organisation, or voice biometrics, or others, as their primary means of authentication. That means the ones in which they are using the most. And I've been fortunate to work with a number of organisations in this case who are in that situation. And it does change the game.

Now, there's a lot more data that sits underneath that. And that's not to say that organisations aren't investing in more modern and sophisticated methods. It's just that they haven't yet reached that level of utilisation or adoption that moves it into that primary category. And we do hope that that will increase as we go forward. Did it, Dan, Derek-

Dan Miller24:32

Yeah.

Matt Smallman24:33

... was this surprise to you?

Dan Miller24:36

Well, I think when you start thinking about the numerator and denominator here, that, especially around authentication, even though it's a narrow sliver, it represents companies with high call volume. So, if it were, hey, number of calls [laughs] or dollar value, I don't know exactly what, I do think that the move to modern, as you slice it, and I think it is validated in the research report, that you will find that there are leading-edge companies, probably your clients, Matt, [laughs] that are employing these things.

Matt Smallman25:20

Yes.

Dan Miller25:21

And it is a significant number of calls that are involved.

Derek Top25:27

Yeah, and I would just also to note, on the authentication, we see here, at least in the States, a lot of use of a one-time password, two-factor, as far as calling in, and then also the repeating of password that you just received on a separate channel. But that's within the transitional, we think of that. So that's we think about authentication. That is a common thing here. But it still does have multiple opportunities for fraud, multiple opportunities for potential man-in-the-middle stuff. And it doesn't provide the true security that we'll see around the modern method. So, yeah, this is another... And when it comes to authentication specifically, it takes a while for organisations. They're slow to move from their traditional methods, and especially if they have just been using for a long time, so.

But I think we are seeing it, and we will move on to, I think, what we see as the next opportunities around methods. But it's a slow, slow, slow go here.

Dan Miller26:30

[laughs] I had an epiphany.

Matt Smallman26:31

Okay.

Dan Miller26:32

And I call it the airport phenomenon. And it has to do with how we are checked in through the security lines, and then what methods the airlines do to [laughs] confirm that somehow you didn't change identity and you still have your ticket and stuff when you get on the plane. And in the past two years, there have been a couple instances, once in Newark, when I was flying overseas, where... Or no, when I was flying across the country, where the airline said, "Hey, we're using a new way to board you on the plane. We're just gonna... You'll just... We'll go by using your face." And then they aborted midway [laughs] through it. It was testimonial that, "Hey, we're a sophisticated company, we think this will be more convenient, and at least we tried." [laughs] But then they stopped.

But I think more and more frequently people are gonna be exposed, not just in the contact centre, but in the real world, in real life, with better ways to authentication. And we'll see. Adoption is slow for a variety of reasons, but the intent is there.

Matt Smallman27:48

I think that's really, Derek's point particularly around the SMS two-factor, and in the full report you can see that broken down into a bit more detail. But yeah, that has become the predominant what we'd call transitional method in here, in some cases taking over from PINs and passwords. And it probably was an appropriate method for, particularly, organisations that don't have very frequent contact with their customers to use that, because they have the mobile phone number. Now, why they didn't use the mobile phone number to identify them or authenticate them when they just call is another question.

But, for me, that's really, like, that's the worst of every situation, yeah? So you know how painful those processes are, the kind of, like, "I'm on the phone to you and you just sent me a text message. Now I have to figure out how to turn the speakerphone thing on-

Dan Miller28:36

Yeah, yeah.

Matt Smallman28:37

... and talk to you at the same time." So, have traded off a ton of usability for, in practice, and I think we all know this, very little actual material security, because the phone network was never designed to be used as an authentication mechanism. And therefore, not only are there holes in the phone network and the telco's management of it, there are also the social engineering aspects, and the fact that we receive so many of these things that we'll give them out to anyone who asks us, at any opportunity.

Dan Miller29:06

[laughs]

Matt Smallman29:06

Therefore, they're the worst of both worlds. But I do see, and we've talked to a number of companies recently, and I'm sure we'll be featuring them in the Modern Security Community, some real potential in the device as the authenticator, but the device as a passive, effortless authenticator, more than an awkward, cumbersome workaround authenticator that we see the SMS OTP.

29:32 What is the potential for modern methods such as Voice Biometrics, Network Authentication and device based authentication?

Matt Smallman29:32

And that leads nicely on to the discussion about potential. Now, we don't have a slide for this today. Unfortunately, you'll have to reach out to Opus to get a full copy of the report to see the breakdown of this. But, for me, this was really interesting as well. Like, we look at three or four key technologies when we think about modern identification authentication.

We look at network authentication for fraud prevention, which the use of the signalling data associated with the phone call in order to assert somebody's identity or identify anomalous behaviour. We look at voice biometrics, which many of you familiar with, the use of an enrolled voice print in order assert that somebody is who they claim to be, or to detect somebody who is known to be fraudulent. And then the use of a mobile device, either as part of network authentication, or to actually initiate a secure call from a secured app, to make a call from that through to the enterprise and take all of the security of the device with it in that interaction. And those are very different technologies. And which one's applicable for your organisation will vary quite significantly.

We see network authentication being really, really applicable for organisations that have reasonably low frequency of contact with their customers, and certainly lower-risk transactions. But that is an enormous amount of companies. We're talking about telcos.

Dan Miller30:54

Yeah.

Matt Smallman30:54

We're talking about insurers. We're talking about healthcare. We're talking about utilities. I may've just said that, sorry.

Dan Miller31:00

[laughs]

Matt Smallman31:00

And when ask people like, "Do you have the data about your customers' mobile phone numbers?", a huge proportion, the vast majority, said, "Yes, we have the data, and therefore we could both identify and authenticate them if we had access to this technology." So I think that's really promising. The fact that it's, like, the primary means of authentication for less than 1% of our vast sample is somewhat distressing. But we'll see that evolve over the next period.

The second category was voice biometrics. And really, with voice biometrics is about frequency of call, not necessarily-

Dan Miller31:33

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman31:33

... just in year, but in relationship. How many organisations have a relationship with their customer that goes beyond two or three interactions? And again, well over the majority of respondents have interactions that makes it worth having the consent conversation, which we've talked about in previous sessions.

Dan Miller31:52

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman31:54

And finally, when we look at the secure call, mobile app features, again, a huge chunk of organisations believe that they have their customer accessing their mobile apps, and therefore they can enable this kind of secure calling. So the potential opportunity for this combination of technologies, what we call modern security and intelligent authentication, is pretty significant. And I'm really pleased by the results of our survey and that we're finally able to start digging into the potential of some this, as opposed to the snapshot that we may have had-

Dan Miller32:26

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman32:27

... in the past. I don't know, Dan, you've been following voice biometrics for, like-

Dan Miller32:33

Ever.

Matt Smallman32:33

... probably a decade longer than me, at least. So, [laughs] any thoughts about how that's evolving?

Dan Miller32:41

Well, it's been pleasant to see that the real toggle has been around passive enrolment, and that there has been greater success in recent years, especially among financial services companies, in getting that voice print captured. And sort of a nasty term there. There's still speed bumps around regulation of biometric information. But I think some case law is being established where the companies that are conscious from the beginning about being compliant and being respectful [laughs] of privacy laws are having some success in getting the voice prints enrolled, and then having seamless implementation take place so that, in many cases, somebody, at that point where they call the contact centre, are told, "We just authenticated you with your voice," and then [laughs] it moves on.

So some of the protocol, some of the workflows are getting mature. Yes, it's considered modern [laughs] compared to the knowledge-based stuff. But more and more, we're seeing significant implementations that show it can be done, and it is being done. So that's cool to see.

Derek Top34:12

Yeah. I would just add, we always talk about a combination of factors, and a segmentation of your customers in terms of what level of risk and security you're providing. And each of these technologies provide, I mean, around the network, or voice biometrics, or some of the secure call stuff, some priority level of security. And so I think, if you combine these with your multiple factors, with your current authentication processes or security methods, there is an opportunity to really, I think, take advantage of some of the technologies that are there now. And that's, I think, going forward, there's not a single solution for every customer coming into the organisation. So I think that's something to look for, is a combination of these factors.

Matt Smallman34:59

That's a really good point as well, actually, the combination of them, using them together and separately, depending on the nature of the customer. And again, we have some case studies. I think we saw Andrea Ayres from Lloyds Banking Group talking about exactly one of those earlier in our season. So, yeah, look back on that one if you haven't seen that.

Just trying to bring this to a wrap, I ask if there are any questions on the call before we try and summarise. I think we're pretty much out of questions on our call today. So I'll ask probably Dan and Derek if you've got any final thoughts or points before we wrap up.

35:45 What is the state of cloud adoption and does it help realise these opportunities?

Dan Miller35:45

Well, I would say that we expect, in the next survey that we do, to see that there's been an acceleration in deployment of the modern technologies in combination that might largely be driven... And we didn't talk about this, some of our early questions were around cloud migration. And I think what we're finding is that there's been a significant investment by firms that always said they won't, for privacy reasons, for whatever, they weren't gonna move infrastructure to the cloud, for telecom, for customer data, all that sort of thing. And they didn't until they did.

And we're at that point where stuff's kinda stabilising in the cloud. There used to be like a real extreme up-and-to-the-right pattern for investment there. It's kinda levelled off, reflecting the fact that many of companies are there already, and they're doing more stuff. And this preoccupation with bringing this layer of artificial intelligence into there has kinda raised enterprise-wide awareness of the value of putting money into cloud-based resources. And when you're doing that, you're gonna find that it's easier to cobble together solutions that include the modern authentication technologies that we're talking about here.

Derek Top37:15

Yeah. And I'm curious to see, going forward, is that usability versus security, usability and efficiency versus security. We see this balance. And this has been an ongoing conundrum for... Not a conundrum, it's part of this challenge, is understanding when to provide pure security, when to provide better customer experience or usability. With conversational AI technologies and more self-service coming in the world, there's expectations for understanding I am who I am. And then, once I get through an automated system, you should know exactly what my question or problem is and resolve it quickly. That type of expectation is gonna be there, customers. At the same time, let's be honest, fraud is not going away. There's multiple opportunities for fraud, more and more. This balance between security and usability and efficiency is an ongoing one. And I'm looking forward to seeing what next year will bring.

Matt Smallman38:08

Yeah, some really good points. I think, Dan, on the cloud point particularly, that is probably the pivotal moment that we forgot to mention. And again, you can see more in the report. It's now easier and cheaper. Like, so-

Dan Miller38:23

Yeah.

Matt Smallman38:23

... so instead of a million dollars and 12 months to implement this technology, we can throw it to a developer, and for a couple of hundred dollars of transaction costs we can figure out whether it's gonna work for us or not. And the same goes for those AI technologies and the right combination of those. Because, when we asked people in the survey, the vast majority are now on these cloud platforms. And their focus is not moving to the next new, shiny thing. It's figuring out how to make the most of it. Much of the effort associated with cloud migration has inevitably been on like for like. Like, just make sure-

Dan Miller38:58

Mm-hmm.

Matt Smallman38:58

... my agents can work from home and that the service is not degraded. But inevitably, the pitch decks that got the investment internally included lots of stuff around how it's gonna make us more efficient and create better value and better customer experience. And now organisations seem to be turning their hand to actually look at that. So again, some really interesting insight in the report, which leads on really nicely to, if I just jump to the next slide... So the report itself will be available next week. You can find it at opusresearch.net. Or if you want to talk about a copy or licensing a copy, then you should contact pheadrick@opusresearch.net. And the address is all on the screen, and they'll be on the replay section after this call has finished.

39:45 Summary and final thoughts

Matt Smallman39:45

So, just recap from my perspective, this was a fascinating survey. And for me, really, is that point where the penny seems to be dropping. Like, all things are coming together. First off, we have a drive for, well, we have the reality of increasing demand, increasing complexity, increasing duration, in an economy where there will be increasing cost pressure, but with a set of technologies, in conversational AI and the rest of it, that can actually realise a lot of value and help with that efficiency challenge.

At the same time, we have many organisations having completed their migration to cloud contact centres and are now focusing on optimising those and realising the value. But we still haven't necessarily solved the identification/authentication challenge. But the incentive to do so is definitely there now, because if we don't solve that, then we can't realise the full value of those kind of investments. And we can't meet the challenge of increased demand, increased complexity, without adding significantly more people to our organisations.

So this was a really interesting year for the survey. And, as I said, next year we will track whether what people said would happen did happen, and that's what they did.

Dan Miller41:01

[laughs]

Matt Smallman41:01

And what they think's gonna happen next time. And hopefully you guys will join us in a similar sort of timeframe next year, and we can see whether our predictions and procrastinations, prognostications [laughing], prognostications, I think, is the correct word, were actually correct. So thank you very much for joining us, everyone who joined the call today.

Dan Miller41:22

You bet.

Derek Top41:22

Yeah, thank you.

Matt Smallman41:23

And we'll see you again soon. Thanks.

Derek Top41:26

Thank you.

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